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ADVENTURES IN NATURE PHOTOGRAPHY SPRING 2008
I started on Sanibel Island, a place known
worldwide for its shells, by just walking along the causeway to the island.
I couldn't believe how far you can wander, I would turn to look back and
couldn't even see the van. At low tide I would work at the water's edge in one
direction and on the way back search the wrack line, the high tide mark, where
in the seaweed and debris you could find interesting things. There are numerous shells to be found, but I located many other creatures by
walking at low tide and turning over rocks or digging up near holes of animals.
I found a great many lightning whelks most still containing the gastropod animal
in them and desperately trying to dig themselves out of sight until the water
returns. Under the rocks were small and large crabs and shrimp that would scurry
away when I exposed their hideouts. But the most interesting creature I found
was near the water edge where its trail in the sand indicated its hiding place.
When I dug it up it looked like a pierogi, the polish stuffed dough units with
different stuffings such as sauerkraut or potato. This creature was about four
inches by two inches and I couldn't see any eyes or mouth, but I collected it in
a jar of seawater and took it back to my camper. It seemed to be still alive so
I put it on my table to watch it and it released some slime and started to glide
around the surface. I couldn't find what it was in any of my books or even the
people I asked at the State Parks and Wildlife Refuges but I kept it in a jar
hoping to find out what it was.
The next day at Sanibel, I returned to my beachcombing and to my delight found a sea star. It was about five inches in diameter and was still alive. I couldn't believe my luck, I thought I would go for years before I found one and here was one on my second day. I kept it in a five gallon pail of sea water back at camp and he could right himself if I turned it over, although it took several hours, star fish just don't move real fast. Now we call them sea stars as they are not a fish of course but an echinoderm. From my studies I had learned the sea stars feed by grasping clams with their arms and using pressure try to force open the bivalve shells. The clam resists this but eventually it opens just a little. Sea stars don't have to open the clam completely, just enough to insert the sea star's extendible stomach. Once inside the clam the stomach dissolves part of the clam and eats it, finally killing it at which time the sea star can completely open the shell and finish the clam. Further searching yielded more interesting shells to be identified later and I also collected some jars of algae and sea water to look at under my microscope. I then moved across the state to Jupiter and the big ocean for a whole new shelling experience. Here I found new shells and corals, limpets, and chitons. These are real interesting animals and I brought a bunch home with me.
I left all my photo gear on the beach and ran back to the van for a jar. All I had was a quart jar and the man-of-war's body was almost that big. I picked up a blown down palm frond in the parking lot and with the frond very carefully slid my prize into the jar. Its tentacles were at least ten feet long and so I had to keep twirling them on the palm frond like spaghetti on a fork and slide them into the jar. I succeeded and carefully filled the jar with seawater and screwed on the lid. Back at camp I got a gallon jar and filled
it with sea water and put in the man-of-war. It was very much alive and kept
dropping tentacles to the bottom and bringing them back up as well as shifting
about in the jar. It had beautiful colors of purple and beige and I watched it
move around for hours. Portuguese man-of-war are cnidarians (pronounced
nye-dare-ee-ans) - members of the jellyfish group that all have stinging
tentacles. They have an air filled sack on top, a float, that acts as a sail in
the sea and move about by the wind although they appear to me to be able to
change direction with body movements as well. Their floats may get to be a foot
in diameter and their tentacles can be forty feet or more in length. Their
tentacles are very sticky and contain hundreds of stinging cells (cnidocysts)
and they lower them down and fish that are swimming by immediately get caught
and stung to death. The man-of-war are animal colonies, not just one creature and
they have other tentacles beside the stinging ones to unravel the fish and lift
it up to its mouth and let it feed.
Many of Florida's beaches can become a real problem to people when these man-of-war are in the area. A swimmer that gets tangled in the tentacles will receive a serious injury or even death. And after they wash ashore, the tentacles are still able to inflict painful welts to beachwalkers even days after they are dead. I found a few more man-of-wars in the high tide drift along the Jupiter beaches, long dead, but they are not such a threat there and most people I talked to never went barefoot but always wore sandals for that reason. I could tell my Portuguese man-of-war was dying and so I took him outside on the picnic table and photographed it in the jar. Sure enough, by morning it had died. (It was probably dying when it washed up on the beach in the first place). Meanwhile, my unidentified animal, the pierogi-like creature had died and I decided to cut it open. For one thing, I thought it might be a tunicate and have a notochord which might help in its identification. As a meat-cutter, I have no problem slicing through an animal but was surprised to find a shell in the middle of its body. It was a shell much smaller than the animal and I figured it must have ate a snail. When I looked it up, the shell turned out to be called a baby's ear. Upon further research, I was amazed to find out that the animal I had caught and couldn't identify was indeed a baby's ear snail. This is a snail that has a foot ten times larger than its shell. The shell is completely enclosed in the animal, you can't see it from the outside. The shell would seem useless as it could never crawl into it to hide. But that is the point. This is a predator snail that doesn't need to hide from anything. It lives just under the sand (where I found it) and tunnels along safely hidden from any fish above the sand in the water. As it moves along it finds snails and other prey and eats them. It doesn't need its shell for protection and will probably evolve it away eventually. So this huge, soft creature was a gastropod, a large snail that left me its tiny shell.
Everyone I talk to while beachcombing seems to have a story. Some just want exercise, some are on a mission to find a certain rare shell, some are escaping problems, some are just getting fresh air. We all have an affinity with the ocean, its in our blood (and our genetics). In my haste to catch the Portuguese man-of-war, I completely forgot about my sea star. (It was good I didn't forget about my camera gear). Anyway, the sea star was lost at sea as I never found it again. My first sea star and I lost it. But now I have a reason to go back and comb beaches next year. You see I need sea star as I have this idea for a photograph. So, now I too have a story to share along the beach. Return to PHOTOGRAPHY JOURNAL main page. Date this page was edited: March 20, 2009.
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On my recent visit to Florida, I did two
successful art shows and one not so successful. However, I really enjoyed my new
hobby - beachcombing. Some call it shelling but I am looking for more than just
shells. Having just completed my Biology study of the Diversity of Life, I was
looking along the ocean's shores for everything from algae and protists to
plants and invertebrates. A vast diversity of life - an estimated 80 percent of
all life on earth - depends on healthy oceans and coasts.
Every morning, I would drive to the Blowing
Rocks region to try and photograph the sunrise. It could be boring, that is no
clouds and just the sun rising or could be cloudy and no sunrise at all. I was
looking for a great dynamic sky to see the sun move through but it wasn't
happening day after day. On one morning after the sun rose with no clouds, I
decided to try for a photo I have had a vision of that consists of a starfish and
the surf lapping the sand near it in a say, two by three foot area. Since I now
had a sea star (it had died in the last day or so), I tried to set up the shot.
But this was a windy day and the surf was either short of the sea star or it
drenched it. I realized I would have to try another day that was calmer and then
I saw in the surf a Portuguese man-of-war drifting into the shore in the waves.
This would be a great catch if I could do it. I was well aware of the stinging
tentacles these animals are armed with.
In
the photos I have included here, the top one is my campsite at Jonathan
Dickinson State Park near Jupiter. The next photo is some shells from Sanibel,
the two larger ones in the bottom left are lighting whelks (which have left-
handed openings while most other snails are right-handed), in the middle right
is a banded tulip snail, the middle pair are angel wings, the upper pair are
venus clams, and the small single one is a slipper snail. The next photo is my
Portuguese man-of-war in a gallon jar. Below that photo is a photo of a barnacle
cluster and a piece of northern cup coral. Finally, in the photo at the bottom
is two limpets and at the top the baby's ear.